At 10:29 PM 2/14/03 -0600, Marvin Long, Jr. wrote:
The experience augmented my growing conviction that this country desperately needs a liberal version of the NRA and leftist types willing to encourage responsible handgun use. You never know when you'll need the second amendment to protect yourself from a nascent security state exploiting TWAT to deprive you of your civil liberties, after all. :-)
Exactly what do you mean by "a liberal version of the NRA"? Not all dues-paying NRA members are rednecks: some are college professors (no, I have never been a member, but I've known others who have.) I'm all in favor of "encourag[ing] responsible handgun use," and, at least so far, have never shot myself or anyone else either by accident or deliberately. (Actually, about the only thing I've ever shot are pieces of paper--sufficiently well to rank "expert" with a pistol when I was in the Air Force--and maybe the occasional tin can. I've never been particularly fond of hunting, either. Not that I'm a member of PeTA, just that hunting as a hobby has never interested me. My next-door neighbor, otoh, is an avid hunter.�) I know enough to know which end of the barrel the round comes out of, and to make sure that end is not pointed at anything I might not want to hit, and to treat all guns as loaded at all times unless I personally have unloaded, cleared, and double-checked it since I picked it up. Hmm . . . that sounds like what the NRA teaches on gun safety, isn't it?
However, the public perception seems to be that there are two classes of people: rednecks who want to own machine guns and grenade launchers, and people who want no firearms at all in private hands, and, as on the a****tion issue, it's pretty much a litmus test: if you are a conservative/rightist type, you better vote against any limits on firearm ownership because any laws restricting private firearm ownership are the beginning of the "slippery slope" to total confiscation of private firearms and an inevitable police state, while if you are a liberal/leftist type, guns are EVIL INCARNATE, and if you just have one in your house, even locked up, the brain-control chip imbedded in each gun by the manufacturer� will send out invisible rays which will eventually make you or one of your family members take out the gun and shoot themselves or another family member.
All sarcasm aside (yeah, right, me?), though, what _do_ you mean by a "liberal version of the NRA?"
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�I've been in his den and seen his impressive collection of mounted avid heads.
�As is well known, Smith & Wesson, Colt, Remington, Ruger, Mossberg, Glock, Heckler & Koch, Baretta, etc., are all wholly-owned subdivisions of Satan, Inc.
-- Ronn! :)
"An armed society is a polite society."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
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